Songs of the Dancing Gods dg-4

by Jack L. Chalker

  She nodded, holding out a hand. He reached out and into his outstretched palm dropped two gold and two silver pieces. “Jeez!” he said. “That’s two and a quarter horses! Was that all of them or are you really that good?”

  “Never mind, smartass. Let’s get back and get some sleep. Tomorrow you can find the extra pieces you didn’t notice, maybe hidden away in a fold of the bag or whatever.” She grew very serious. “Look, it’s important to me that you understand this. I love your father. I would never leave him, and I wouldn’t want to be with any other man like this. I don’t know what happened between him and your mother because he never talks about it except in vague terms, but if we split up, it’ll be him taking the walk out of male ego, not me. I’m sorry, but the situation’s just different here.”

  “All right, I’ll shut up about it,” he assured her, “but only this once. You keep sneakin’ off with these strangers in strange places with no backup and sooner or later somebody’s gonna get you good. People just ain’t that different over here as you like to think they are.”

  Not too different at all, he thought, as they rode back in silence, except that these folks have a ready excuse for the wrong things they do. Except that at least these two cared what he felt, and that was something. Something he very much needed, and didn’t want to lose.

  When Irving had asked what sort of fairies ran the ferry, the man had told him to wait and see. Now, as it came in, he still wasn’t quite sure. It was a big thing, flat but raised up, with a real hull, and there was a huge single sail on a mast in the center controlled by some kind of rope-and-pulley system that extended to the sides of the ship and seemed to go down into the water. There seemed to be lots of some sort of large fish, maybe dolphins, ahead of it in the water as if scouting the way, but, aboard, there appeared to be no wheel, no wheelhouse, and no apparent crew!

  As it drew closer, it was clear that the big fish or whatever they were in front were on lines, like a team of horses attached to a big wagon, and that they were in fact steering the boat that way, although the main propulsion came from the manipulations of the single sail. And there was someone, or something, atop the lead fish, almost invisible from any distance because the creature’s coloration seemed to match or reflect the water.

  Now the boat was angled so that the current would take it into shore, the sail slowly folded inward so that it was no longer driving.the boat, and, for a moment, the rider was against the dark background of the boat hull rather than the water. The outline was of an impossibly beautiful girl, almost a cartoon of a sexy girl, only her skin seemed weird, as if she were somehow made of glass or plastic and filled with water.

  “A water nymph!” Joe exclaimed. “I never knew they did any work they didn’t have to!”

  Tiana nodded. “But what’s pulling and steering? Mermaids?”

  At that moment the “fish” team, freed of its tension for a moment, sounded as one, and from the water emerged the ugliest, most fearsome, monstrous heads Irving had ever seen, almost a cross between a lion’s head and maybe the Creature from the Black Lagoon. They roared with a terrible sound that more than fit their horrible visage.

  “Hippogryphs!” Joe exclaimed. “Nymphs who never did anything in their lives riding and guiding a beast that I never knew could be tamed! They’ve got to be tame, though. She wouldn’t have the strength to guide them against their wills!”

  The water nymph stood atop the lead beast, reins in hand, like a performer in some big water show, pulling this rein and that until the beasts were to one side, out of the way of the boat, which then passed them. The team moved in and started nudging the boat into the landing.

  There was no dock as such; just a mud flat that went gently down into and under the water. The boat ran right up on the flat and seemed to dig a little trench as it stuck fast in the shallow mud. Now a couple of human boys, maybe eight or nine years old, who had been sitting on a piece of wood, ran up and started unfastening the front end of the boat, which dropped with a crash onto the mud and created a ramp from the exterior. As soon as the people, horses, and carts inside started to come off, all sorts of adults seemed to pop up from all over the place hawking just about everything and keeping an incessant set of pleas to buy this or that or, “You’ll need this,” as the travelers disembarked.

  “It’ll be interesting to see how they collect the fares,” Tiana commented. “Water nymphs must be pretty much in contact with the water at all times or they’ll start to dry out.”

  If Joe had been at all aware of the previous night’s activities, he did not let on to either of them, and seemed perfectly happy to accept Irv’s contention that there was more in the purse than he’d thought. He really began to wonder about his Dad, though; he knew that Joe had lightning reflexes and could pop up out of an apparently sound sleep, sword in hand, at the merest sound of danger. For the simple life, the boy thought, things were sure getting complicated, with everybody keeping secrets from everybody else.

  Now it was their turn to be besieged by the vendors as they loaded back on. It was kind of the honor system on who got on first, but it wasn’t much of a crowd and the line was pretty much self-enforcing.

  Irving looked inside and wasn’t sure he liked it. “Hey! This tub’s sinkin’!”

  An old guy with a thick gray beard taking a cart aboard chuckled. “Don’t worry about it none, son. They decide if the water comes in or stays out. Just you wait!”

  The small boys who’d unfastened the ramp now waded into the water and got hold of ropes floating there on the surface. Then they ran back and attached hooks on the ropes to an assembly at each end of the ramp and gave a shout. Something pulled on the ropes from the sea, raising the ramp, which hit a wooden catch at the top of each side and clicked into place. The boat lurched this way and that, and suddenly was floating free. The deck had only a few inches of water in it, but now the water seemed to coalesce in clear spots and from those spots arose, almost oozed, the shapes of two of the water nymphs. They had an unnerving, Other-Worldly perfection to them, and they looked exactly alike, each about four feet of total feminine sensuality.

  “Don’t touch the hair, boy,” the old man cautioned in a low tone. “It’s like sea nettles. Stings like crazy.”

  “Welcome to the Daryia ferry,” they said in unison, in truly musical, singsong voices. “Please give us your fares now as we pass among you. After we are squared away, the water will recede and there is fodder in the forward hold for the animals which is included in the fare.”

  “I wonder what happens if you don’t have the fare?” Irv mused.

  “Then they take you,” the old man replied.

  That was not a comforting thought.

  Even up close, the fairy nymphs seemed weird, like beautiful but extreme sculptures made of glass. Irv, like all the other men, couldn’t really take his eyes off the creatures.

  When one got to them, Joe, who’d appropriated the money pouch, fished out six gold pieces and dropped them in the nymph’s palm. The pieces sat there a moment, then seemed to sink into her hand, and you could watch the golden coins go down through her into the water and then to who knew where?

  “I’ve never heard of nymphs running a ferry before,” Tiana commented. “Nor tamed hippogryphs, either.”

  The nymph shrugged. “It beats lying around all day being seductive,” she responded. “It’s an old troll ferry that was abandoned during the War. We looked at it and decided that sitting around looking sexy for a few thousand years had grown kinda old, so we did it. The hippogryphs are not tame. They’re partners.”

  Joe thought some reply to that was called for, but, for the life of him, he couldn’t think of one. Finally, Tiana commented, “It’s nice to see some independent businesswomen here for a change.”

  As soon as all the fares were collected, the nymphs melted into the water, and, true to their word, the water itself began to drain out somewhere, until the deck was as dry as a bone.

  From what was now the fro
nt came a series of splashes and an eerie, hypnotic siren song, and the boat began moving in earnest.

  Although the crossing should have taken no more than twenty-five or thirty minutes, it was tricky in the crosscurrents of the big river, and there were constant adjustments this way and that.

  Finally, Joe muttered, “What I want to know is what they do with their money.”

  “Perhaps it is best not to know that one,” Tiana replied. “Even nymphs might like pretty baubles, and who knows how they live under the water, but what and where does a hippogryph go to spend it?”

  Irv just shook his head in wonder. Maybe this place wasn’t so much like home after all.

  He went over and jumped up on some of the side-bracing so he could look out at the passing scene. The ferry landing was already receding in the distance, and they Were about to clear the bend and go out into the mainstream of the river itself.

  As soon as they did clear, he could look back and up and saw, or thought he saw, the point near the next bend where they’d spent the night. Looking the other way, Marquewood still wasn’t much, although, beyond the trees, he thought he saw the roofs of some buildings that perhaps marked the town.

  The river itself was amazing, both as a main highway for the entire continent and for supporting lives and livelihoods of both humans and nonhumans. It had an abundance of fish; he’d watched some being caught from small jerry-built piers near the landing, and while the fish looked, well, pretty strange, they were still fish and it was still pretty much what would be expected.

  Just in front of them, a small school, or whatever they’d call them, of mermaids popped up out of the water and shouted and waved, not to him or the passengers, but to the strange nymph who was both captain and teamster up ahead. Up close, the mermaids’ skins did have a rather bluish cast not evident from shore, and their hair was a much darker blue, but they still looked remarkably like a bunch of schoolgirls out in the river for a swim.

  Part of the reason the trip took so long was the number of small islands that had been built up by the river’s deposits near the bend, forcing them to thread their way through small inlets separating the mounds. And yet, even the small islands were covered with trees and bushes and the nests of exotic tropical birds. Some mermaids were sunning themselves on a big rock at the end of one of the islands, and on shore a number of dark shapes seemed to writhe and then go into the water. Alligators, maybe? Or something else as weird as barking, bearded fish.

  Here and there some water nymphs would rise to the surface and seem to walk on or even slightly above the water, shouting things in their operalike singsong voices to those handling the boat. Somehow, it drove home just how vulnerable land-dwelling humans like him were on this thing. Not only did this river have all the dangers of any tropical river or even any deep river, except maybe the ton of pollution Earth added, but it was also home to a number of races as intelligent in their own way as humans were, but as different as night and day from humans as well. There might be whole civilizations living beneath these waters, with who knew what powers and what kind of lives?

  Finally, they began to come in to the opposite shore; the one they left now seemed eerily lost in a late morning mist. The town itself was still mostly masked, starting on a bluff well up from the river landing and sheltered by thick, almost junglelike vegetation.

  He wanted to see how they came in, but a yell from Joe ordered him down and he reluctantly obeyed. He quickly saw why; the bumps and jolts of the operation might well have shaken him off the side or, if he’d leaned too far forward, into the river itself.

  “We’ve still got a little money,” Joe told him, “so we’ll catch a bite to eat here and get what news we can of the route. I want to find out if there’s anything nasty between here and Terindell.”

  “We’re not stayin’ here tonight, then? I figured it might be time for another dance,” the boy responded.

  “It might be, but it’s still fairly early, and we can make it halfway there, if we keep on, and all the way by tomorrow night. Five or ten miles north and I’ll be in country I know well, which helps a lot.”

  “You still worried ’bout that zombie guy, huh? He’s way over on the other side now.”

  “He’s on both sides—bet on it. And he’s been down farther than this and a little inland before, so I don’t want to take any chances. Not too many years ago, a demon-led army was literally at the gates of Terindell, and not too long ago, some of the towns between here and there were under Sugasto’s control. If he had to pull back because he was reaching his limit, then we’re still within his limit now. I don’t underestimate the S.O.B. I keep doing that and almost dying or worse as a result. And he’s got a particular set of scores to settle with us, just as we do with him. Last time he controlled things; the next time I want to set the conditions.”

  The town, like the vegetation, was rather different than the High Pothique ones he’d been in, but the basics were the same. Gone was any trace of adobe; buildings here were of stone and wood, with thick straw or bamboo or even, in a few cases, red slate roofs. The people seemed a bit more prosperous, although that was like going from zero to almost one on a scale of ten, and had a different look about them. It wasn’t a big difference, but the folk of High Pothique looked more Arabic, while these looked more European, their complexions more tan than olive, their features more like die typical white folks he knew back home.

  The men tended to wear white cotton in a uniform, baggy style, often with soft leather boots, and about half tended to wear broad-brimmed, rounded white hats. The women, on the other hand, made those of High Pothique seem almost overdressed, most of them wearing little more than varicolored cotton string bikini bottoms or petite cotton loincloths. They tended to be fatter, or chunkier, on average than those of High Pothique, and most all of them wore oversized earrings, bracelets, and the like of bone or copper or something else, and almost all of them tended to cut their hair real short, almost in a man’s trim cut. Like those of High Pothique, they tended to carry huge amphoras or boxes on their heads, and, also like High Pothique, most seemed to be pregnant, carrying babies as well, and having lots of naked kids around.

  It didn’t smell much better, either.

  Most of the small cafes were just preparing for lunch, though, so it was possible to get hot, thoroughly cooked food, which always made Irving feel a bit better. Cooking still killed little nasties that wanted at your insides. As usual, he let his father order, he wasn’t sure he really wanted to know what some of the stuff was. At this level of cooking, anyway, it all tasted pretty much like whatever it was cooked in, anyway.

  Joe picked up his tankard and looked at them. “Two days to real beds and decent food,” he said. He gestured in a sort of a toast. “To the end of the road,” he added, and drank.

  The proprietor, over here a man, told them that they’d have to clear border entry at the crossroads; the only road out of town led to there, so it was the border station, to avoid crimping the town’s economy more than any other reason. Travelers who cleared the border here might tend to hurry on past; those who knew they would yet have to usually stopped and spent something. And, of course, going the other way, travelers to High Pothique tended to come here and spend the night before the journey.

  The border people would have information on all the roads and routes.

  Unlike High Pothique, which seemed pretty loose about its guards and such, this station was almost like a small military stockade built of formidable stone. The blue-and-gold flag of Marquewood flew atop a large pole, and the bordermen were dressed more like soldiers, in uniforms that matched the flag.

  Irving looked over next to the flag and tried unsuccessfully to suppress laughing. Standing just beneath it was a huge marble statue of a nude man and woman, bigger than life, looking back at them.

  “No wisecracks,” Joe warned. “Besides, we’re going to have enough problems remembering that we’re suddenly nobodies here.”

  A soldier, wi
th a trim, brown mustache and military bearing, came up to him. “Do you have any papers?”

  “No, sir, although we are all citizens of Marquewood. Although my parents were from a far-off place, I was born in, and am going home to, Terdiera; the lady is of Sachalin origin.”

  The soldier nodded, then looked at Irving. “You, young sir, are not of Marquewood, surely.”

  “My son,” Joe answered hastily. “I travel a lot in my work.”

  The soldier looked at Joe, then the boy, then shrugged. “Apparently so. And from where did you journey?”

  “High Pothique, entirely. A well-earned holiday, you might say. Now I am returning to my employer.”

  “I see. And who might that be?”

  “Ruddygore of Terindell, of course.”

  The soldier started a bit. “You work for the sorcerer?”

  “Legally, no. But he has first claim on my services.”

  The soldier nodded and went to Tiana. “You are of Sachalin?”

  “I was born in that city, my lord.”

  “And what are you to these two?”

  “My lord, I am his slave and mistress,” she responded, pointing to Joe.

  The response startled Irving. Hell, she was his wife, wasn’t she? But it seemed to satisfy the guy. Maybe it was an image thing, he decided, or one more of them damned Rules.

  “Name and family?”

  “My lord knows that upon becoming a slave I gave up my name and family. I am called by whatever name my master chooses, and for now he calls me Ti, after the Blessed Goddess.”

  “You were acquired in High Pothique.”

  “No, my lord, in Marquewood.”

  He nodded, then asked a few specific questions about the far-off city, which she answered perfectly and without hesitation, knowing the place well. He seemed satisfied. “Very well.” He wrote something and handed it to Joe.

  “This is your customs entry for the horses and slave,” the border guard told the big man. “She seems to be of Marque-wood and her accent is right, so I will allow her in free of duty. However, if you plan on leaving the kingdom again with her and returning, you should have her fitted with a nose ring to validate her country of origin or you could wind up paying duty.”